Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrowwas an American lawyer, leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. He was best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks. Some of his other notable cases included defending Ossian Sweet, and John T. Scopes in the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, in which he opposed William Jennings Bryan. Called a "sophisticated country lawyer", he remains notable for his wit, which...
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth18 April 1857
CityKinsman, OH
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the soul and brain of man.
Criminal cases receive the attention of the press. The cruel and disagreeable things of life are more apt to get the newspaper space than the pleasant ones. It must be that most people enjoy hearing of and reading about the troubles of others. Perhaps men unconsciously feel that they rise in the general level as others go down.
I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man -- public opinion.
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause . . . True courage and manhood come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world, the faith in one's purpose, and the sufficiency of one's own approval as a justification for one's own acts.
Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.
No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.
Hoover, if elected, will do one thing that is almost incomprehensible to the human mind: he will make a great man out of Coolidge.
I knew that it is out of the question to have honest, economical government while a few are inordinately rich and the great mass of men are poor. In fact, it is to be doubted if anything really worthwhile can be done until there is a fairer distribution of wealth.
If a man really has charge of his destiny at all, he should have something to say about getting born; and I only came through by a hair's-breadth. What had I to do with this momentous first step? In the language of the lawyer, I was not even a party of the second part.
Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility.
I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here.
The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions.
All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.